Special Featurerbdspecial feature, poetry, marilee goad

Marilee Goad: Beg for Attention

Special Featurerbdspecial feature, poetry, marilee goad
Marilee Goad: Beg for Attention
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Question from the Weed Flower

 

Am I the urn into which you’ve deposited my ancestors’

splintered ashes? Soot stains my brow with their blessings

and curses: historical castoffs you think we can forget,

but the land remembers, its earth humming with the roots

of seeds sown long ago, scattered on fallow and fertile lands

alike, they crept up through the cracks in our floor, flowers

you call weeds the neighbors call treasures — I can’t tell if

the difference is semantic or significant anymore, but their

thorns needle my spine in indignation, beg for attention

I wish I didn’t have to heed: weak voices that weep hymns

and prayers, the fertilizer for our current condition — only

I can’t tell yet if I’m a flower or a weed, and sometimes

I think maybe it doesn’t matter as long as I can bear fruit

that might help heal the suffering of a people shuddering

the grief from which they cannot escape, centuries of our

sins written in our DNA like soil with worms that can’t

eat up the rotten bits fast enough: could I if just try?

Marilee Goad attended the University of Chicago and has work published or forthcoming in Ghost City Review, OUT/CAST, and Georgetown University School of Medicine’s Scope arts magazine for medical students.

Special FeaturerbdPhilip Schaefer, special feature, poetry

Philip Schaefer: Everyone Else’s Darkness

Philip Schaefer’s first collection of poems Bad Summon won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize from the University of Utah Press and will be released Summer 2017. He is the author of three chapbooks, two of which were co-written with friend and poet Jeff Whitney. He won the 2016 Meridian Editor’s Prize in poetry and has work out or due out in Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Thrush Poetry Journal, Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Bat City Review, The Adroit Journal, Baltimore Review, and Passages North among others. He tends bar in Missoula, MT.

Special FeaturerbdPhilip Schaefer, special feature, poetry
Philip Schaefer: Everyone Else’s Darkness
Special FeaturerbdJeanette Quick, poetry, special feature

Jeanette Quick: Thunder Will Break the Earth Apart

Jeanette Quick lives in San Francisco. Her work has been published in Ghost City Review, Rat's Ass Review, The Curious Element, The Bright Line, Penumbra, The Tax Lawyer, District Lines, and the American Banker. She has earned residencies from OBRAS Portugal, Elsewhere Studios, Art Farm, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds a Jurisdoctorate from Georgetown University Law Center and a Bachelor of Arts from University of California, Berkeley. She regularly contributes theater reviews to DC Metro Theater Arts.

Special FeaturerbdJeanette Quick, poetry, special feature
Jeanette Quick: Thunder Will Break the Earth Apart
Special FeaturerbdGary Charles Wilkens, special feature, poetry

Gary Charles Wilkens: Edit the Sad Parts

Gary Charles Wilkens’ first book, The Red Light Was My Mind, won the 2006 Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize. His manuscript Fayetteville was a Finalist in the 2014 Moon City Review Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared more than 70 journals and anthologies, including The Texas Review, Moon City Review, Passages North, the Adirondack Review, James Dickey Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, and Midwest Quarterly. His fiction has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Pale Ghosts Magazine. His day job is Associate Professor of English at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Special FeaturerbdGary Charles Wilkens, special feature, poetry
Gary Charles Wilkens: Edit the Sad Parts
Special FeaturerbdDavid Joez Villaverde, poetry, special feature

David Joez Villaverde: Rituals to Lesser Gods

David Joez Villaverde has forthcoming or recently published work in Crab Fat Magazine, Occulum, Wigleaf, 100 Word Short Story, Adbusters, After the Pause, Cheap Pop, and Hoot. He is former editor of the After Happy Hour Review. He can be found at schadenfreudeanslip.com or @academicjuggalo on the Twitter.

 

Special FeaturerbdDavid Joez Villaverde, poetry, special feature
David Joez Villaverde: Rituals to Lesser Gods